Tag Archives: emotions

Why living in fear sucks
Fear. It’s an emotion that we’ve all felt at some point or another. No matter if it was the first we slept without a night light on to going away for college for the first time, it’s never a good feeling. Often times, fear can keep the best of us from engaging in perfectly good life experiences. In my short 24 years of life lived in San Francisco, Cleveland, New York, and Amsterdam. Of course moving around by myself was scary but do you think I would have been able to do any of that had I let fear be my guiding light? Um, no. I’d still be back in Cleveland working retail and listening to bad homemade hip-hop music. Now, of course there is nothing wrong with that, but it’s just not what I had in mind for my life. When I was younger I expressed my desires to move out of state to my mother. She was apprehensive of course telling me that I should stay in Ohio because it’s what’s familiar to me. At the time, and now, I feel that excuse is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. Why would I just keep doing something that didn’t make me happy because it’s what I’m used to? Makes no sense right? But I guess fear has a way of doing that to you.
Most times, fear is a totally temporary feeling yet we let it influence really major decisions in our lives. If I look back on all the times I felt an intense bout of fear, I can remember the feeling going just as quickly as it had come. I spent so much time psyching myself out that I didn’t realize I actually had nothing to worry about in the first place. Usually, it was that witch negative Nellie who was to blame, not me. But once I gave her a roofie and left her for dead in some far off corner of my mind, it was smooth sailing from there.
Living in fear actually makes no sense, and gets you nowhere in the process. Which is why I try not to do it most of the time but sometimes I let fear get the best of me. Like last year when I was living in Amsterdam. Originally I had planned to go to all these different countries and experience all these different cultures but I chickened out at the last minute and let my fear of the unknown decide things for me. I didn’t want to go by myself and at the time, it seemed like I had no one to go with. So I didn’t go at all. So instead of having all these cool pictures of me galavanting around Italy, Spain, and even Paris, I have nothing but regret. Which by the way, doesn’t make for a good facebook photo album. Looking back I want to kick myself in the knees for not doing what I really wanted to do in the first place. That fear eventually subsided while the opportunity to eat crepes in front of the Eiffel Tower is a little bit more out of reach now.